Muslims targeted in UK in aftermath of Paris attacks

LONDON

A handful of crimes targeting Muslims in Britain have occurred since Friday’s terror attacks in Paris, police said.

In London, a girl wearing a hijab was abused on a subway train. Fellow passenger Ashley Powys wrote on Facebook how he intervened to save the girl as they traveled between Oxford Circus and Brixton in central London.

“I got on the train as normal and sat opposite a young girl wearing a hijab,” he said. “She smiled at me as I sat down and nothing else was said. Just behind me, another guy got on the train and stood at the connecting door of the tube and began to stare at this girl."

Powys said the man verbally abused the girl, calling her a “terrorist”, “scum” and referring to the Paris attacks.

The 22-year-old said he pushed the man away and then comforted the girl until she reached her stop.

A British Transport Police spokesman said police were aware of social media reports of a “hate crime” on the line. “We treat all such incidents extremely seriously,” he said.

In Scotland, a Muslim cultural center in Bishopbriggs, 6 kilometers (4 miles) north of Glasgow, was targeted in a firebomb attack early Tuesday morning.

The center was empty and no-one was injured and the motive for the attack remains unknown.

“The fire is being treated as willful and a joint investigation between Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is now underway,” Chief Inspector Craig Smith, a local police commander, told the Evening Times newspaper.

Social media posts urged police to treat the attack as a hate crime.

Early Tuesday morning, a petrol bomb was thrown through the window of Muslim man and his wife in Ballykeel, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

Amin and Margaret Ibrahim were uninjured.

“We are treating the attack as a religious hate crime,” Superintendent Ryan Henderson, of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, told the Ballymena Times newspaper.

He added: “The people who carried out this petrol bomb attack are totally out of step with our modern and multi-cultural community. I am disgusted by this attack and I know that the vast majority of Ballymena people will react in a similar way.”